


Bals des Victimes

by Wolviecat



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Background Ableism, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24537307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolviecat/pseuds/Wolviecat
Summary: Lafayette would be perfectly happy to just stay at home, so he isn't even sure how got there - at a posh fundraising party for the victims of the epidemic. For the people like him...
Relationships: Adrienne de Lafayette/Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette
Kudos: 13
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Bals des Victimes

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of an AU where there was an zombie pandemic (called Encephalitis occultata). After coming to the US, Lafayette became a soldier. Later, he was bitten and had his leg chopped off to prevent infection.
> 
> For the Banned Together bingo 2020 row 1 column 3 "Afflictions and deformities"

It was Hercules Mulligan who basically kicked down his door one day and informed him he can't spend the rest of his life cooped up in his apartment eating cheap ramen and feeling sorry for himself. That he needs to take a shower (his neighbours already started to suspect there is a dead body somewhere near) and try to get out before he dies of vitamin D deficiency. And after a what seemed like an hour, Lafayette finally gave out and promised him he will try.

In the retrospective, he had to be more out of his mind that he'd thought, because he was pretty sure Hercules was talking about some low stakes outing with friends. Not something where he would be forced to wear his uniform and where he will be called captain Lafayette. Not something with television crew, with journalists and questions and quest list and rules for every single step. Not an official charity ball for the Ocultata survivals.  
Now he was sitting at the table at the very corner of the hall, his jacket turned inside out and draped over the back of the chair to hide the insignia and ribbons. He wanted nothing more than to turn invisible, to be left alone with his drink until it will become socially acceptable to call it a night and to disappear back home to his sweatpants and Netflix. He checked his watch and swore under his breath. It felt like he was there for days, with dozens of awkward introductions and even more awkward chit-chat about his life, yes, not all of the survivors ended up catatonic, yes, I know I look healthy, it still hurts to stand for too long, no, I don't have any craving for the human flesh, yes, it would be weird to take a look at my scar... All of this and it only took an hour and a half.  
And the dancing. Even before, some of the most humiliating moments has been spent at the dancing lessons, trying to force his too long, uncooperative legs to move to the rhythm and inevitably ruining some poor girl's shoes, and then begging his grandma to stop forcing him to go. She never yielded. Dancing is a part of the French culture, she always said, and she would never let her only grandson to become an uncultured hooligan. When he was trying to find anything positive about the loss of his leg, the permanent excuse for why he can't dance was probably the only one. But here, no one seemed to care neither about his lack of skill, nor about his injury. The minute they found out he was THAT captain Lafayette, they've seen it as their civic duty to take him for a song or two of dancing and small talk that made his head spin. When he finally managed to sit back down, his leg was throbbing so bad he felt like puking, cursing every day he was too tired for proper physio.  
He closed his eyes and tried desperately not to sink his nails into the mangled skin of his leg.  
One more hour. One more hour before it will be long enough to go home, sleep for two days, maybe kill Mulligan for this stupid idea, and then never, ever leave his apartment again.

"Is this seat taken?"

He swallowed the harsh words that were bubbling up in his throat. Another wealthy, bored lady who wanted either help the poor little innocent victim, or to brag about meeting a dangerous undead creature to her friends at the country club. He wanted to scream, or to tell her to go to hell, to throw his drink in her face. But he knew anything he would do would never be seen as something done by Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Gilbert Lafayette. It would be something an Ocultata survival did, and not because he was angry or sick of being belittled and paraded around like an animal, but because they are inherently aggressivne and dangerous. Just a trouble waiting to happen.

"No."

"Oh, thank god." 

He've heard the legs of the chair scraping on the floor, and somebody sitting down with a tired sign. "If I had to tell someone one more time how I've lost my arm, I swear I will bite someone..."  
He opened his eyes.  
Her right arm, stretched in front of her, was made out of metal half way up to her shoulder, where the skin was covered in deep, twisted scars. That type of scars one got from getting their limb chopped off by any sharp piece of metal that was lying around, and then having the virus climbing up their nerves on the way to their spine. That type of scars covering his leg.  
"Aren't you afraid they would lock you up for it?" he asked, unsure if didn't miss some English idiom.  
"I hope so. Anything is better than this." She smiled and hold out her metal hand to him. "Adrianne Noailles."  
"Gilbert Lafayette."  
If she knew his name, she didn't let it show. They talked the way he could for a couple of years - not an interview, or a military briefing, not a half-drunk midnight chat among friends who can't be sure they will survive the next day. No fear, no desperation, no anger at their pain or at the people who caused it. Just two strangers bonding over their boredom at a stupid party neither of them wanted to be.  
The first hour and a half felt like eternity. The rest of the night, spend with Adrienne, passed in minutes.  
When the last song started to play, Lafayette climbed to his feet. "May I have this dance?" he asked, over the top formal and stiff, but still grinning.  
"Of course, Mr. Laffayete, but I have to warn you," Adrienne nodded: "I always want to lead."  
"That's okay," he said: "I am a terrible dancer."


End file.
